I just received the e-mail confirmation of my latest bead order.

Now ordinarily this wouldn't be a particularly big deal (other than the anticipation of shinies to come) but it's perhaps the biggest little order I've ever made. I just officially ordered my first mini-stash of diamond beads. The diamond beads I've seen in the past seem to fall into two categories: exceedingly high quality beads that are droolworthy and decidedly unrealistic to just have floating around in my base stock; and glittery diamond chips that while pretty, are generally too expensive for me to justify. So this was a big step for me.

Admittedly, some of the mini-stash will be going towards a set of jewelry for myself. My mother's wedding is in October, and I've been asked to be the matron of honor. Obviously I accepted, and now that I have my dress, jewelry is the next logical step.

The diamonds I ordered are by no means high quality in the traditional sense - they're a translucent milky white to silver. From the picture they did seem to have a nice amount of sparkle, though. I'm planning on pairing them up with some mauve pearls, or maybe a bit of pink amethyst.

So we'll see how the experiment goes once the diamonds show up in the mail. In the meantime, I get to look forward to getting something decidedly sparkly in my mailbox!

Labels: beads, diamond, jewelry

I've spent possibly too much time over the past several days working on my one sacrificial larimar, and I've come to a few conclusions.

1. It is certainly possible to remove the matrix with lots of grinding and polishing.

2. When starting with an 8mm bead, the stone that's left in the end is substantially smaller.

3. It's hard to hold an irregular 8mm nugget bead in a clamp.

4. Gah, but this isn't worth it!

Yeah. I'd held out high hopes for improving on this larimar, but it's just not going to happen within my lifetime. I suppose it's time to learn what I've already learned about turquoise: embrace the matrix.

I mean, I see perfect looking turquoise with no matrix and think it looks fake, even when I know it's not. I have a turquoise cabochon that I picked up a few years ago when one of the local jewelry stores was closing and liquidating their entire inventory. This turquoise is really an exceptional one, I can tell, but there's just something about that uniform opaque blue that seems a little unnatural.

So give me my turquoise with some variations in color and a touch of black matrix. Now if I could just think that way about the larimar, I'd be set to go.

Labels: beads, jewelry, lapidary, larimar, turquoise

A few weeks back I found something at my local bead store that I never thought I'd be able to track down for a reasonable price: a full strand of larimar nuggets. These aren't the huge ones; they average about 8mm each. The ones that are good quality are just wonderful, powder blue with swirls of robin's egg blue.

The others, though... you can find that coloration on them, but there's a lot of matrix. However, it looks like the matrix is mostly just on the surface of the stones, so if I can take off a comparatively thin layer, I can theoretically expose more of the good color (and eliminate some of the pitting along the way).

Jeff's suggestion was to grab a rock tumbler and go to town, but I want to preserve as much of the good material as I can in this process. So I've grabbed my sacrificial bead and the Dremel.

I've already found that using the standard polishing bits does next to nothing with this material, so I've broken out the diamond bits for this project. I do seem to be taking off some of the matrix, but it's a time consuming process. At this point, I still haven't quite gotten where I'd hoped to get with my one sacrificial bead, although it does look somewhat improved.

Pictures forthcoming if any of this effort is worth it...

Labels: beads, jewelry, lapidary, larimar, polishing

I think I'm finally coming to the end of the mass reorganization.

I hope.

The aforementioned junk box has been cleared of its junk. Entirely. I'm currently storing some empty jars in the box, as a matter of fact.

(Side note: Is there a market for one more person to make votive candles using baby food jars? Because there's a limit to how many I need for storage, and with a small ravenous child in the house... But I just can't bear to throw them away, knowing full well that it would probably cost the same to purchase the same little jars whether they're filled with baby food or not.)

The last thing I need to do is sort out my silver, figuring out what stuff I can realistically reuse and what's going in the scrap pile. But even that's almost done; I picked up a little box yesterday for the teeny silver beads that kept sliding under the dividers in my larger box.

And it goes further than all that. My straight knitting needles are organized in two zippered cases. The circular needles are stashed in a PVC pyramid we constructed out of 1/2" pipe just for that purpose. The yarn is all safely in its drawers in the closet, organized by color and fiber. Even the scrapbooking paper is in a 12" file box now.

Which makes me wonder: can I get back to just making some jewelry now?

The organization thing is a blessing, a curse and a compulsion. Once I get started, it can't stop at just "Oh, I have all the beads in boxes now, that's good." It has to continue until I'm at "OK, I've organized the gemstone beads by shape and size, the pearls are in three separate boxes, and the hematite and mother-of-pearl have their own box because they don't go in the other categories..."

It's kind of like what would happen if Monk was a little less germaphobic and a little more creative. I get this feeling like if I start making anything new, it'll be that much more difficult to maintain this organizational scheme.

Damn. I knew I shouldn't have bought that last bead box.

Labels: art, beads, craft, jewelry, organization